April 20
2012

(SPOILER)Trade magazines give The Avengers rave reviews.
The reviews are full of spoilers, so non-spoiler versions: Hollywood Reporter say "(joss) pulls off a stunning feat in bringing balance to this superhuman circus, engineered to charm the geek core and non-fans alike." Variety say: "...it's a clean-burning, six-cylinder entertainment that exudes discipline in every particular, from the script's balance of sincerity and self-effacing humor to the well-integrated visual effects to the keen sense of proportion that governs the ensemble. Whenever the possibility of boredom or excess rears its head, Whedon finds an elegant solution." Empire Magazine say: "A joyous blend of heroism and humour that raises the stakes even as it maintains a firm grip on what makes the individual heroes tick. "

I really can't wait to see the movie; from everything I've read, it's that rare beast, a crowd-pleasing summer blockbuster that is actually a ton of fun. And every review starts off the same: this movie is really the hardest thing to pull off, but Joss did it.

My favorite fan reactions have been those that are calling it akin to Raiders of the Lost Ark or that it's what The Expendables should have been.

There was also a review in The Times today; five stars. I'll see if I can find it - has it already been posted?

Might not be able to get it online without a subscription, but the review basically said it was great, and said the only flaw was that genre-wise it differed in no way from the typical superhero blockbuster (I think meaning in terms of structure and format; three acts, the final one feeding into the possibility of a sequel).

Have a lot of you guys watched that Iron Man/Thor scene? Humor, spectacular effects. There's so much awesome stuff in that one minute scene. That scene alone makes me confident this movie will at least be worth going to the cinema for.

Ouch to that SFX review... I mean I know (in my head) that reviewers are different independant people with their own views, fetishes and predjudices etc. (and in a lot of ways that's a fantastic thing) but I always find it hard to see such diverging views of the same film from different people. I think it especially stands out in the case of a magazine like SFX that generally supports quality genre entertainment.

I'm rambling a little but I think the point I'm trying to make is that if SFX as a company had sent a different reviewer (of which I assume they have many) to see that film, the star rating would possibly have been very different. If the film is as good as the general concensus seems to suggest, it feels a bit like SFX are doing their readers a disservice with a lukewarm review.

Random rant about the nature of criticism here brought on by obsessive reading of a lot of the negative reviews of Cabin in detail, but if you have someone review a film, do they need to "get" it in order to be able to give an informed review? Or, is their inability to "get" it a valid review in and of itself, indicative of the portion of the population that would also not "get" it.

It feels like the SFX reviewer here doesn't "get" Avengers. They cite their opinion that the film has no need to exist "beyond an intriguing experiment in franchise-mashing" without understanding that The Avengers *is* the franchise, planned out from the very beginning and rooted in Iron Man but built on and deliberately planned toward through each of the subsequent films, and that it's not just something cobbled together like that for the films, but that the Marvel Universe has always been a cohesive whole like that, and it's part of what makes it fun.

It's not even that it's a lukewarm review that winds me up but more that I guess I feel like SFX of all people should have more time for this sort of thing and that "I don't get it" style reviews have more place in, say, Knitting Quarterly.

It sounds like the SFX reviewer doesn't care for genre mashing, in which case this production was never going to work for him. Also, there's that whole 'looks like TV' comment again. I'm starting to think people with that complaint watch too many Michael Bay movies. Personally, I like being able to see what's going on in a scene without things exploding in tight close-up every five seconds.

Heh, yeah - not trying to take anything away from the Whedony knitters of the world :-) Hey, Joss' fandom is so broad that I could have picked any fictional non-scifi publication and there'd be people that would stand up and say "oi!".

Cement Quarterly, incorporating Bollards Digest: "Hey, I mix cement for a living and I happen to love Joss! Check out my bollards in the shape of the Mutant Enemy mascot"

Synchronised Swimming Independant: "See this youtube link of us performing River's battle with the reavers"

Goodness, the worst reviews are still very positive. 17 fresh versus 0 rotten, though Rex Reed hasn't reviewed it yet. The SFX review is just written in a glass half empty mood but it still comes through as a recommendation.

My biggest fantasy was that this movie would be good enough to work for people who didn't grow up cherishing a pile of Avengers comics. Well, it looks like that happened. I hadn't been genuinely excited about a summer movie this century and now I'm more excited for a movie than I may ever have been.

I've tried to avoid any spoilers but Kevin Fiege has already claimed personal responsibility for any mortality that does or does not occur in the movie.

Rex Reed's review: The Avengers tries to be the ultimate superhero movie, however Green Lantern is completely unbelievable. And those vampires were not as funny as the director, Josh Wheldon, likes to think.

Let's be honest here, there's not a single human being on the planet Earth who will avoid seeing this film based on one negative/lukewarm review. And given the box office returns of the TRANSFORMERS films, I'm pretty sure a thousand negative reviews wouldn't deter many people from seeing what's arguably the most anticipated film of the summer. So there's little reason to get worked up over any less-than-stellar AVENGERS reviews that pop up.